Thoughts at 30 hour mark

[Wintermute]

Rant and copious amounts of IMHO. I still love the game enough to spend 3 days playing it non-stop.

The core gameplay is fantastic. There's something soothing and meditative about expanding the library, reading and re-reading books. It greatly delivers on the whole fantasy of an occult bookkeeper.

The event system is a dissappointment. I really thought that depending on which visitors we choose to help, the outcomes of the events will vary. Instead there's nothing, not even a generic resolution to event - it just ends without a single note. Woul really love to see the system expanded in the future, even if it's just a narrative fluff.

The crafting is abominable. The only thing that helps me navigate it is the knowledge from Cultist Siumlator - that the different rights/crafting stations don't matter, while aspets do. That's why when I play contrabass and get a cup of grail tea out of it, I can shrug it off. That knowledge is still completely alien to a new player, and makes no sense. Then there is the fact that stations are spread ♥♥♥♥ knows where. Then there is the fact that different skills of the same aspect give different produce - despite having no additional visible aspects differentiating them. Only candlemaking has an aspect, for some ungodly reason, but there's clearly a multitude of other hidden differentiators.

I'd actually like to return to the said grail contrabass, which actively DOESN'T let me do anything with the grail skill themed around playing string instruments. Or at least the hint tells me there's no recipe for it. But with different skill I can conjure tea. With a contrabass. Yay.

Winter ink skill, paired with enough winter aspect, for yet another ungodly reason produces a NECTAR ink. I've said it before, but CS was very straighforward with its idea of "what goes in, goes out". Do an edge summon, get an edge monster. This here, instead, is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

On the topic of hints the crafting stations give you, I'm inclined to believe that they actively lie to you, and drive you away from some recipies. I have no direct confirmation for that, but I've just found a single solitary book that tells me that a winter ink skill can produce different ink when paired with sky aspect. There is no information about that anywhere else, and I lack the sky to test it. But the hint on the station with the skill absolutely railroads me into winter craft, and if the book is true, those hints are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible.

You can not seriously expect people to find a single randomly placed book telling them about things like that. You might expect us using common sense, but most skills make no sense, and when strings skill doesn't do anything when playing strings, which produce tea instead - any kind of logic becomes completely void. The crafting system is an unconvinient, illogical, convoluted trial and error that, once again, relies on the player keeping external notes. Which is a failure of game design. We have a damn journal in the game - why can't we write stuff like this in it.




The skill/soul system is also abominable. The closest skolekosophy evolution station I was able to find is locked behind aspect 10 cleaning job, after you dig through entire main building of the house. Or was it 11 aspect? It's far beyond the trivial amount. Station still doesn't let me evolve my shapt, so ♥♥♥♥ me I guess, and ♥♥♥♥ reading knock, I'll keep digging through the house.

The skill tree looks like something straight out of Path of exile - a strong contender for "one of the worst skill trees designed in a videogame", and main reason people refuse to play Path of exile. Here, it's impossible to figure out without trial and error, nor is it possible to reset. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lines on it don't tell anything. Since there is no logic to skills, there is also no logic to where they go and what soul they give you. If you go blind, you will absolutely lock yourself out of at least one soul type, which will cripple your ability to read the respective aspect.

Speaking of reading and aspects. It still runs as a circle of perpetual ♥♥♥♥ you. You didn't get any knock books early? Sunshine, that's too bad. You won't get any knock skills - not directly at least - which means you won't get shapt (just kidding, you won't get shapt because you already softlocked yourself on the tree, better restart the run), which means you won't be able to read knock books, which means you won't get knock skills, which means you won't get shapt, which means you won't read knock books etc etc etc ad infinitum. This will also absolutely cripple your ability to expand the house in search of new books, because here your soul stats are of the biggest importance.

With the amount of skills in the game, one would assume that the way out of the cycle is to explore whatever aspect you're fluent with, and branch out from it. One would assume wrong. Here I'll take scale aspect as the target of my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, because it's the pain of my current run. I have 55 skills as of now, with most developed being winter and heart, of which I can reliably crack rank 10 books, and rank 14 with correct weather. How many of those 55 skills have scale? 6, one of them language. How many of them overlap with heart or winter, for me to branch into them? 0. As such, I can not upgrade them with my "fodder" lessons. They are perpetually stuck at rank 1, with extremely few upgrade options, meaning I can't read even rank 6 scale books to further develop them. Cycle of perpetual ♥♥♥♥ you in action.

Randomized placements of books also can softlock your progress. I have upgraded mettle, and some basic forge skills - but no forge books whatsoever below rank 14, hence almost no sources of forge memories or lessons. So I can't really do anything with forge, as I simply have no skills for it because the game decided I don't need them. That's with fully cleared main house, slowly working up the clocktower, down the well and across the seaside passage.

On that note, I also have pretty high rose skill and upgraded fet - but again, no rose books to read.

Aspects aren't made equal, due to garbage soul support and design. Lantern is found on 2 souls parts, while knock only on 1. Thankfuly it's the main aspect here, unlike edge. Edge is found on 2 souls, but it's never the governing aspect, meaning you need to UPGRADE to get 2 edge per soul. Sky is found on 1 soul, and is also secondary. Nectar and scale are bundled into the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ health, where they both are secondary aspects, making books of those aspects further more unreadable. The whole system makes some aspects arbitrary harder to deal with than the others, with seemingly no ways to offset the difference.

Skills themselves heavily encourage you to go wide, as wide as humanly possible, while punishing you for it. Without learning the initial lessons, you have no way of knowing what wisdoms the skill belongs to, or what practical aspects (like curse removal) it even has. However, since most practical aspects that aren't candlemaking are hidden, you need to experiment to discover what the skill actually does. Without aspects for it, lol. For something specific like curse removal, it's still a good idea to go wide, because different curses require different aspect checks, so might as well spread out. Then the skills need to be widely upgraded to slot higher on the tree to get upgraded souls. You might even need to upgrade an already slotted skill

But while you do that, you cripple your ability to pump high aspects for reading and crafting. Well, cripple it even harder than what the game does for you already. Go wide, and lose ability to read high-tier books (or even low-tier ones, hello scale). Go tall, and lose ability to remove the witchworms, because those require specifically winter infestations check, and not heart infestations check you can pass with flying colors. Yay. You also don't know what crafts do you lock yourself out by going tall because, again, there's no logic or aspects to skills.

On my current run I specifically decided to go not only wide with skills, but only upgrade skills with their respective lessons (which I know isn't an optimal thing to do). That's how i ended up with 55 skills, and I'm happy to report that there are still 6 different book corruptions I'm unable to deal with with my skill collection. This approach did take me through entirety of the main house, but the game once again starts to slow down to a "wait for random weather and tavern visitor combo" slog, which is what prompted me to write this wall of text. It's not even that I went too wide on skills - not yet. I'm just lacking the books on the principles I can read, and lack any way to make edge, scale, nectar and sky functionally readable, even when I have pretty decent skills for some of them. Going tall wouldn't save me from ♥♥♥♥♥♥ randomization. And I know for a fact that would I go blind, without making a chart for soul parts and keeping track of every single book memory, I would get stuck much, much earlier.

All of that without Numa coming and dealing permanent, unfixable damage to your lesson count. Good luck if you don't know about it in advance.

I still hold my stance that CS was much more merciful game. It just killed you, and not even that often once you understood it. BoH instead lures you blindly into a trap which you discover hours later.

TLDR: Let us write in the journal and then read those notes. Everything about skills is bad. Skill system needs clear IN-GAME documentation, and, ideally, a redesign and condensing. Skill tree needs a redesign period, and clear IN-GAME documentation you can explore before commiting. Evolution stations shouldn't be as strict and prohibitive, given their rigid placement. The memories for aspects that are lacking on souls should be more potent to compensate. There should be ways to get more lessons somewhere, because it's a fixed amount that can only be reduced by Numa, but never increased back. There should be a way to get more books without relying on equally random and slow AF auction house. There should be a way to target the aspects of those books while we're at it - maybe something like expeditions from CS (god those were awesome). And I would really like to see the event system expanded - there are marks of something incredibly cool in them, but it's not realised.

[pempelune]

I don't think this game has been made at all for new players (ready: people who didn't play CS). Like, the new lore here is already opaque enough, but imagine trying to understand what the Chancel is when you don't know what an Hour is to begin with? And unlike in CS, in HH there's no progressive revelation of the basic lore. In CS the journey through the Mansus and the Aspects levels would slowly get you to understand the setting, but in Hush House that knowledge is assumed.
I really wouldn't recommend this game to anyone who's new to the setting.

EDIT: oh, and I won't react to everything in your rant as it's far too long, but if you're stuck on some books you can use desks! On desks you can understand books just like with the Verb but unlike it, you can use tools or inks on top of memories for an Aspect boost. No way level 6 Memories will resist you then.

EDITEDIT: Generally, I'll happily concede that BoH has issues with telling you what to do. I disagree that the crafting system should be more intuitive than it is now - I think it's very cool that to make a devious beast from 1000 years ago hatch from a gull egg, I have to find the recipe in obscure, occult books - but the basic stuff should be obvious or at least plainly indicated. You should be told that you can use desks to get past the hardest books, you should be told that you can give your assistants more that just memories to progress their aspects, etc.
But otherwise? I know where you're coming from. I also got the midgame slump where you have to wait for the perfect coordination of random weather and assistant and it's very frustrating, but as soon as I started crafted, as soon as I stopped trying to do things the way I had up to now and started trying new things, the block vanished and the rest of the House went very fast (and without spending days praying for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Nun to proc).

[Devilfish]

I was also a little disappointed in incidents but now that I'm close to 100 hours (I'm violently unemployed) I can see how they all play into the larger story of what's happening in the world. Plenty of oooooooh moments. It was cool to have it all click into larger stories told through all these fragments.

Anyway, should have dropped this in the reviews and not the forum. Now you're going to get people pointing out the ways you're factually wrong on a few fronts and it will get so damn unpleasant.

[Vardis]

Originally posted by Wintermute:

On the topic of hints the crafting stations give you, I'm inclined to believe that they actively lie to you, and drive you away from some recipies. I have no direct confirmation for that, but I've just found a single solitary book that tells me that a winter ink skill can produce different ink when paired with sky aspect. There is no information about that anywhere else, and I lack the sky to test it. But the hint on the station with the skill absolutely railroads me into winter craft, and if the book is true, those hints are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible.

On this point, I suspect I know what you're referring to.

After Abbess Nonna's death, the 'double foundation' is dissolved and the monastery is reformed to accept only male novices. At this point the ink changes. The helpful scribe explains that for the new foundation, the Abbot has mandated stargall, not yewgall, ink. He outlines the differences (use of Inks of Containment techniques with a Sky, not Nectar, context) but doesn't trouble to explain why.

This may just be a mistake. Neither Stargall nor Yewgall are made from Inks of Containment.
I stand corrected! :)

It also could be flavor text and is intended to only be partially accurate in some cases. Crafting has been straightforward, as far as I've seen. Each skill has two aspects, and each aspect has a prentice, scholar, and keeper recipe. The scholar recipe requires a type of item (glass, liquid, etc), and you'll get the hint for that when crafting if you have a skill of 10+. In addition to the required 15+ skill, the keeper recipe requires a specific item, and you won't be told what it is.

A few also have additional crafting options, like to make candles and whatnot.

Winter ink skill, paired with enough winter aspect, for yet another ungodly reason produces a NECTAR ink. I've said it before, but CS was very straighforward with its idea of "what goes in, goes out". Do an edge summon, get an edge monster. This here, instead, is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

That's... not the results I've gotten from the Winter aspected Inks of Containment. Are you talking about another Winter ink skill that I perhaps don't have?

The skill tree looks like something straight out of Path of exile - a strong contender for "one of the worst skill trees designed in a videogame", and main reason people refuse to play Path of exile. Here, it's impossible to figure out without trial and error, nor is it possible to reset. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lines on it don't tell anything. Since there is no logic to skills, there is also no logic to where they go and what soul they give you. If you go blind, you will absolutely lock yourself out of at least one soul type, which will cripple your ability to read the respective aspect.

There is a logic to where skills go in the Tree of Wisdom. And each branch off that tree gives one of two elements of the soul. For instance, putting a skill in Bosk will get you either Ereb or Health, depending on the skill.

You are absolutely not locked out of at least one soul type. I suspect you are assuming that you will always get the same soul element as you did the first time on that branch of the tree.

But while you do that, you cripple your ability to pump high aspects for reading and crafting. Well, cripple it even harder than what the game does for you already. Go wide, and lose ability to read high-tier books (or even low-tier ones, hello scale). Go tall, and lose ability to remove the witchworms, because those require specifically winter infestations check, and not heart infestations check you can pass with flying colors.

I don't think you're intended to remove an infestation or curse or w/e solely with the skill that is effective against it. None of my skills that are effective against infestations (witchworms) have winter. None of my skills effective against curses have the knock aspect I need to remove it. Coincidentally, high end ink has 7 aspect.

[Vardis]

One thing that will help a great deal if you are not already doing it is to attempt to read books without having the skill for it. Have extra elements of the soul or memories handy, and you'll likely pass if you're reasonably close.

You're given three chances to increase your skill after you start the process, and that's randomly selected from weather, memories, soul, art, comfort, or a random mood that gives +2 to three or four aspects.

I have no grail, sky, rose, or edge soul elements yet (yep, zero - I haven't been assigning my skills to the tree), and have been able to read challenge level 8 books of those aspects. Sky's up to 10 because of the better weather cards. My top skills are at 8 Winter, 7 Moon, 6 Knock, Edge, Forge, Scale, Heart and 5 Sky, Rose, Nectar, Moth, Lantern. Only 4 Grail since I haven't seen much of those. I have 49 skills total, only one of which is a language.

I've found the game very forgiving, but I've seen a lot of complaints from a number of people saying the opposite. And I think what might be happening is a lot of things, small and large, are simply being overlooked. I saw one post where someone was strongly recommending that you never attempt to read a book above your skill because of some chance for failure and getting a malady. Many aren't making use of crafting drinks (or even good found ones) to help their assistants. Often, people are stuck trying to unlock rooms and don't realize that they already have the tools to unlock them, they just haven't found them. Or they have, and didn't recognize them for what they were.

[TobyTwoTokes]

I love this game, but I think most of your critique is well argued and sound. I too would love to see more indicators like "candlemaking" on the skills. Also, beyond the ability to make notes in-game (cos not everyone loves the immersion breaking alt-tab to excel for some odd reason), I would love to see a function to sort skills by name, function, primary aspect, secondary aspect, school, level and/or prior commitment.

There are so many skills, and I hate looking at them all helter skelter.

It may also be heretical to suggest this, but there are just too many skills. It devalues the effect of having them. I understand that you need to have X amount of skills to fill up the skill table with (which I do unironically love by the way) but I would suggest a simple, elegant solution: Make a big chunk of the skill passive, rather than active abilities. Have some of them shave x amount of time reading books. Have some of them boost certain attributes during certain circumstances (your Health gains +1 heart during the summer, your Fet gains +1 Knock when you're in the possession of a melody memory, etc, etc.), have some of them increase the potency of potions, etc. Perhaps this would entail a radical redesign of the game, but to be honest I'd prefer that over the insane skill bloat experienced already in the mid-game.

I dunno, perhaps it's too radical a suggestion. But I feel that something must be done.

Also, I do need a sort by______ button soon, or I swear the worms in the world will feast on my brain t

[brusin]

Originally posted by Wintermute:

Here I'll take scale aspect as the target of my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, because it's the pain of my current run. I have 55 skills as of now, with most developed being winter and heart, of which I can reliably crack rank 10 books, and rank 14 with correct weather. How many of those 55 skills have scale? 6, one of them language. How many of them overlap with heart or winter, for me to branch into them? 0. As such, I can not upgrade them with my "fodder" lessons. They are perpetually stuck at rank 1, with extremely few upgrade options, meaning I can't read even rank 6 scale books to further develop them. Cycle of perpetual ♥♥♥♥ you in action.

You have to figure this stuff out. The game doesn't have a game over condition. So the challenge is the 'puzzles' that the game throws at you. Mainly you read books and take notes, remember which memory you get from where, know your tools (move them to corresponding desks for ease) and figure out how to crack the next book or room.

Scale 6 doesn't require you to have high level skills. You need a lvl 1 Scale skill Scale aspect 2), Memory: Fear (Scale 2), unupgraded health (Scale 1) and an hourglass as a tool (Scale 1).
I guess you didn't notice that hourglass is a tool. There are also a few Scale inks lying around.

Generally I think inks are a viable way to break out of being softlocked because of some randomness.

[Runix]

I realized pretty quickly that the game doesn't have the kind of logical problem-solving that a traditional point-and-click RPG does. This isn't Return to Monkey Island.

Instead, it's a puzzle game. A very big, very elaborate abstract puzzle game where you match cards to slots and try to figure out which cards and which slots generate the cards you need to progress.

At some level, the lore is a very abstract overlay that's only tangentially connected to the game itself. You can play the game while completely ignoring the lore (although as you noted, there sometimes are hints buried deep in the books and other lore objects; and it's helpful to know how the aspects connect to the in-game elements and each other.)

That's definitely a departure from Cultist Simulator, where there was a much more logical connection between the lore and the mechanics of the game. If you wanted to progress in certain ways you needed to read the books associated with that path of progression and do certain actions that logically made sense (well, according to occult logic, anyway!) It doesn't work that way here, there's a lot more stuff that just doesn't make sense.

But I'm still enjoying the game. Again, I'm just treating it like a puzzle game and going with it. Why does putting certain cards into the pipe organ generate a scientific lens? Who knows, I'm just going with it.

[Uthwe]

Originally posted by Vardis:

Originally posted by Wintermute:

After Abbess Nonna's death, the 'double foundation' is dissolved and the monastery is reformed to accept only male novices. At this point the ink changes. The helpful scribe explains that for the new foundation, the Abbot has mandated stargall, not yewgall, ink. He outlines the differences (use of Inks of Containment techniques with a Sky, not Nectar, context) but doesn't trouble to explain why.

This may just be a mistake. Neither Stargall nor Yewgall are made from Inks of Containment.

But they can be, if you get Inks of Containment to 5 sky with other aspects below 5. I have Inks at 1, +Phost, and a 3 Sky tool that is making the ink for me right now

[Vardis]

Originally posted by Uthwe:

Originally posted by Vardis:

But they can be, if you get Inks of Containment to 5 sky with other aspects below 5. I have Inks at 1, +Phost, and a 3 Sky tool that is making the ink for me right now

Well damn, that's interesting. I must've been locked out of that due to it being too high. I can still make those, just not with Inks of Containment. Hmm, maybe I'll sacrifice that to Numa to try stuff out with it at a low level again. Thanks!

I also just ran across another skill that doesn't fit the mold and didn't have a prentice level recipe. So the general rule mostly holds true. But not always. That seems to be the case for a number of things in this game. :)

[Ryusui]

40 hours myself and I have to agree with the OP. As a veteran of Cultist Simulator, with at least one win of every type except Exile under my belt, my own "determination" is that Book of Hours is most absolutely not a "more chill" game than CS; it's a vastly more opaque game with a lot more ways to screw yourself over. The fact that making a mistake won't end your run is in absolutely no way a mercy here: the game relies heavily on systems that basically punish you, the player, for not being psychic, and despite the insistence that "this is a game where you should be taking notes" (which I'm fine with! I enjoy cataloging what things do!), what note-taking actually reveals is that there's a lot of arbitrary nonsense you're supposed to either intuit or fumble through via trial and error.

I should add, another crucial difference between CS and BoH, something that arguably works against the latter: scope. Unlike Cultist Simulator, Book of Hours does not lend itself to being replayed multiple times from scratch. Because of this, things like the aforementioned trial-and-error system for determining how best to assign skills to the Tree of Wisdoms go from mere inconvenience to a bafflingly badly built waste of time.

Again: 40 hours, and I have largely enjoyed my time, but there are pain points here I can't overlook, and I am sincerely at a point in the game where I see my explorations devolving into a loop of struggling to get the last third or so of the house unlocked. (More memories with aspects higher than 2 would be useful in that regard!) I plan to come back when there have been a few QoL overhauls, but for now, I think I've wrung all the enjoyment I can out of it.

[Vardis]

Originally posted by Ryusui:

40 hours myself and I have to agree with the OP. As a veteran of Cultist Simulator, with at least one win of every type except Exile under my belt, my own "determination" is that Book of Hours is most absolutely not a "more chill" game than CS; it's a vastly more opaque game with a lot more ways to screw yourself over. The fact that making a mistake won't end your run is in absolutely no way a mercy here: the game relies heavily on systems that basically punish you, the player, for not being psychic, and despite the insistence that "this is a game where you should be taking notes" (which I'm fine with! I enjoy cataloging what things do!), what note-taking actually reveals is that there's a lot of arbitrary nonsense you're supposed to either intuit or fumble through via trial and error.

I should add, another crucial difference between CS and BoH, something that arguably works against the latter: scope. Unlike Cultist Simulator, Book of Hours does not lend itself to being replayed multiple times from scratch. Because of this, things like the aforementioned trial-and-error system for determining how best to assign skills to the Tree of Wisdoms go from mere inconvenience to a bafflingly badly built waste of time.

Again: 40 hours, and I have largely enjoyed my time, but there are pain points here I can't overlook, and I am sincerely at a point in the game where I see my explorations devolving into a loop of struggling to get the last third or so of the house unlocked. (More memories with aspects higher than 2 would be useful in that regard!) I plan to come back when there have been a few QoL overhauls, but for now, I think I've wrung all the enjoyment I can out of it.

A question for you then - where do you feel that you've been screwed over by the game, or frustrated? What specifically are you struggling on? I'm curious what level of challenge for rooms has been giving you trouble.

[playing Mario rn]

The endgame is a huge issue. Finished just 10 minutes ago and was very frustrated that you can only end at a specific event which is randomly timed. Meaning I had to wait for half an hour until I could do the thing. Nothing else to do but to wait it out. Come on, that's weak.
It's also a huge contrast to CS where the end was extremely hectic as you were juggling multiple timers. Can't we have a middle of the road thing? Where the endgame doesn't require me to align 10 timers just right to gain a 2 second window of opportunity BUT ALSO not an endgame where the gameplay ends 30 min. before I get to do the final click towards the victory screen?

[pempelune]

Originally posted by Ryusui:

40 hours myself and I have to agree with the OP. As a veteran of Cultist Simulator, with at least one win of every type except Exile under my belt, my own "determination" is that Book of Hours is most absolutely not a "more chill" game than CS; it's a vastly more opaque game with a lot more ways to screw yourself over. The fact that making a mistake won't end your run is in absolutely no way a mercy here: the game relies heavily on systems that basically punish you, the player, for not being psychic, and despite the insistence that "this is a game where you should be taking notes" (which I'm fine with! I enjoy cataloging what things do!), what note-taking actually reveals is that there's a lot of arbitrary nonsense you're supposed to either intuit or fumble through via trial and error.

I should add, another crucial difference between CS and BoH, something that arguably works against the latter: scope. Unlike Cultist Simulator, Book of Hours does not lend itself to being replayed multiple times from scratch. Because of this, things like the aforementioned trial-and-error system for determining how best to assign skills to the Tree of Wisdoms go from mere inconvenience to a bafflingly badly built waste of time.

Again: 40 hours, and I have largely enjoyed my time, but there are pain points here I can't overlook, and I am sincerely at a point in the game where I see my explorations devolving into a loop of struggling to get the last third or so of the house unlocked. (More memories with aspects higher than 2 would be useful in that regard!) I plan to come back when there have been a few QoL overhauls, but for now, I think I've wrung all the enjoyment I can out of it.

Not to minimize your frustration, but you might be looking at this wrong? This game, largely, does not punish you. It punishes you for having too many unused lessons, with Numa (and I wish that wasn't a thing, honestly, it *is* stressful), and it punishes you for not trying things out (you get bogged down sooner or later).
But beyond that? Strategically assigning stuff in the Tree, is not necessary. I went by whatever piece of lore of the two I liked best, personally, and it didn't stop me from unlocking the house and completing the game. Generally, there's not much pressure to level up the right skills, or level up your soul, or whatever, because there's a very wide numbers of things you can do to compensate for whatever inefficiencies you create. You don't have the skills to craft that memory you need for that book? Well, you can probably use a tool to supplement a lower level memory, or maybe use an ink. Your wist is too low to open that moth challenge? Give your assistant some honey and those shears, and he'll do just fine.
And so on. Generally, if you feel like you're stuck, it's probably because you're missing some way to make your life easier. Because, in general, the game won't tell you those ways exist.

EDIT: And yeah, the Numa requirement to end the game is awful. Terrible. I'm sure there's good lore reason to it, but as it is I spent upward of an hour on it and it's putting me off doing a second playthrough.

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by Vardis:

This may just be a mistake. Neither Stargall nor Yewgall are made from Inks of Containment.

Inks of containment + 5 sky = Stargall
(All ink skills + 5 sky = Stargall)

Inks of containment + 5 nectar = Yewgall
(Again, all ink skills + 5 Nectar = Yewgall)

These are both pretty straight forward, you want to make a sky or nectar based ink? Use the Ink skill plus that aspect. Where it falls apart is this pattern doesn't hold for Catwink(Moon focus) or Perhibiate(2 heart/2 lantern/2 scale/1 winter). These you need to make with the Ink skill that has that focus so the One with Moon for Catwink and the one with Scale for Perhibiate. Yet this also fails because Inks of Revelation has lantern yet you can't make perhibiate and catwink has scale but you can't use Inks of power with scale(that makes perhibiate).

So for 2 of the Apprentice Inks it makes sense yet the other 2 all bets are off. 50% intuitive.

These skills pretty clearly show where some clean up is needed. If you need more examples then I ask you how to make fabric from scratch(you can't despite having at least 2 skills pretty clearly themed around it), why don't forge skills make metal from scratch(instead you need knock), and WTF is Insects & Nectars a MOON aspected CHANDLERY skill which makes ZERO items with Moon and instead needs Moth.

---

As for OP's post. There are definitely some points I disagree with but I whole heartedly agree with Oriflamme being way too slow. If you want to RP as a librarian who collects books, in a game about being a librarian who collects books, it takes a painful amount of time to even get a single new book and that's if Oriflamme's even decides to show up that season. (Oh you ran them out of their stock? Well they're going to take a season or two off to restock.)

EDIT: Sure why not, some more weird Skill things:

Edicts Martial is 1 Edge, 2 Moon. It is the only way to make an Old Wound persistent memory(with Moon). Once you level it to level 5, the 5 edge takes precedent(despite being weaker). Normally you can get around this by just putting in 10 of an aspect. Ok well what's the easiest way to get more Moon? Memories. Well guess what 10 Moon+Memory is the scholar recipe(Woo! another locked path) So you have to get 10 or more Moon, Less than 10 edge, and not use a memory to do an apprentice level craft.

Pentiments & Precursors, Sea Stories, The Great Signs and the Great Scars, and Tridesma Hiera all give Scholar grail hints to add fabric to make their recipe. Ok great! Let's just see here, station that takes fabric, well only the loom. Ok good so far, oh wait. NONE of these fit because of the aspect restrictions.

[Vardis]

Originally posted by Pandorian:

Originally posted by Vardis:

This may just be a mistake. Neither Stargall nor Yewgall are made from Inks of Containment.

Inks of containment + 5 sky = Stargall
(All ink skills + 5 sky = Stargall)

Inks of containment + 5 nectar = Yewgall
(Again, all ink skills + 5 Nectar = Yewgall)

This totally ruins my spreadsheet. AAAAAAAHHHHHH! Also, pretty cool. Thanks. :)